From the New York Times bestselling author of An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor’sLearning to Walk in the Dark provides a way to find spirituality in those times when we don’t have all the answers.

Taylor has become increasingly uncomfortable with our tendency to associate all that is good with lightness and all that is evil and dangerous with darkness. Doesn’t God work in the nighttime as well? In Learning to Walk in the Dark, Taylor asks us to put aside our fears and anxieties and to explore all that God has to teach us “in the dark.” She argues that we need to move away from our “solar spirituality” and ease our way into appreciating “lunar spirituality” (since, like the moon, our experience of the light waxes and wanes). Through darkness we find courage, we understand the world in new ways, and we feel God’s presence around us, guiding us through things seen and unseen. Often, it is while we are in the dark that we grow the most.

With her characteristic charm and literary wisdom, Taylor is our guide through a spirituality of the nighttime, teaching us how to find our footing in times of uncertainty and giving us strength and hope to face all of life’s challenging moments.

Barbara Brown Taylor’s last book, An Altar in the World, was a New York Times bestseller that received the Silver Nautilus Award in 2012. Her first memoir, Leaving Church, received an Author of the Year award from the Georgia Writers Association and won the Theologos Award for best general interest book of 2006. Taylor spent fifteen years in parish ministry before becoming the Butman Professor of Religion at Piedmont College, where she has taught world religions since 1998. She lives on a working farm in rural north Georgia with her husband Ed.

Popular religious and spiritual teachers have a lot of positive things to say about “light” and “enlightenment,” but almost nothing to say about the value of “endarkenment.” Yet darkness plays an essential role in the spiritual life, especially when the well-lit structures of old-time religion are falling down. What might it mean to learn to walk in the dark? Could this be a skill that none of us can do without? Ordained Episcopal priest and memoirist Barbara Brown Taylor shares her personal spiritual journey of learning to walk in the dark outside of organized religion. Barbara Brown Taylor is the Butman Professor of Religion at Piedmont College in rural northeast Georgia and currently a McDonald Lecturer at Emory University. An Episcopal priest since 1984, she is the author of 12 books, including the New York Times bestseller An Altar in the World. Her first memoir, Leaving Church, met with widespread critical acclaim. A book signing and reception on the plaza follows the program.